Leading with empathy, integrity and belief
From country school principal to independent fishing retailer and Chair of Tackle World, Julie Ramm’s story is one of reinvention, resilience and a deeply human approach to leadership.
For Julie Ramm of Tackle World Miami in Western Australia, leadership has never simply been about being the person in charge.
It is about people.
It is about understanding where they have come from, giving them the opportunity to grow, having the courage to make difficult decisions — and sometimes believing in somebody until they learn to believe in themselves.
Julie describes leadership as an enormous responsibility:
“Leadership can break someone or it can make someone.”
It is a philosophy shaped not only by the leaders she has worked with, but by a life and career that has taken her from a small country school to fishing retail and ultimately to the Chair of Tackle World.
And through it all, one lesson stands above many others.
Believe in yourself.
WA bred through and through
Julie was born in Perth, spent some of her early childhood in Tom Price and then grew up on a farm in regional Western Australia.
Her primary school had just 26 students from Kindergarten through to Year 7. After attending a neighbouring high school, Julie moved away to boarding school for Years 11 and 12 before leaving home at 17 to undertake four years of teacher training in Perth.
Education would become the foundation of Julie's first career.
Her first country teaching posting eventually led to becoming a school principal, while life in regional WA also introduced her to Ash, a farmer who would become her husband.
Together they had two children and became part of the fabric of their local community.
But when their children approached high-school age, Julie and Ash faced a difficult decision.
Both had experienced boarding school themselves and didn't want the same path for their children.
The family moved to Mandurah.
For a period, Ash continued travelling back to the farm while Julie and the children lived in Mandurah. Rather than bringing the family closer together, the arrangement created its own pressures.
Eventually, they made the difficult decision to sell the farm.
It would prove to be the beginning of a completely new chapter.
From the classroom to the tackle shop
Julie quickly found work as a deputy at a large metropolitan school, while Ash found his way onto the water, working as a deckhand on a cray boat.
But Julie's new role was vastly different from the country school environment she had left.
Working extensively with at-risk students and families became emotionally demanding.
Eventually, she knew something had to change.
Then a fishing store came onto the market.
Julie saw an opportunity.
Ash initially saw seven-day-a-week retail.
Julie persisted.
“I was like, ‘No, we could do that. We’re right. We’ll find staff.’ Famous last words.”
Neither had a background in retail business. But they did have something valuable.
They were customers.
They knew what they liked about the store.
More importantly, they knew what they didn't like.
That gave them a surprisingly powerful starting point: look at the business through the eyes of the customer and build the sort of fishing store they themselves would want to visit.
In 2015, Julie and Ash took over the business — in the week leading into Easter.
They very quickly discovered just how hectic fishing retail could be.
Fishing was already part of the story
Although retail was new, fishing wasn't.
Julie's earliest fishing memory is catching a brightly coloured parrotfish during family holidays in Busselton.
Her stepfather would take the family fishing, and although fishing became less prominent for a period, meeting Ash rekindled the interest.
Living inland didn't stop them.
Whenever holidays arrived, the family headed towards water.
Fishing gradually became more than recreation.
It became part of their family life — and eventually their livelihood.
Leadership is a responsibility
Julie's perspective on leadership has been shaped by decades of working with people.
She led children as a classroom teacher.
She led adults as a school principal.
She has led employees in a family business.
And she has led fellow business owners around the board table.
Across those very different environments, the fundamental responsibility remains the same.
“You’re guiding and allowing others to grow within the realms of your own values.”
For Julie, those values begin with integrity, honesty and empathy.
Every person brings a different history into the workplace. Their experiences shape how they communicate, react, perform and relate to others.
A leader may never completely understand another person's journey.
But they can create an environment that recognises the person behind the employee.
“We’re all human beings and we’ve all had our own journeys.”
That doesn't mean accepting poor behaviour.
It means understanding people while continuing to challenge them to grow.
People are people
When Julie and Ash entered retail together, they brought very different leadership experiences.
Julie had spent much of her career leading people.
Ash had spent much of his working life as a farmer — often working independently.
Their perspectives inevitably differed.
Complicating things further, Julie entered the business at a point where she was exhausted from her previous leadership role and initially didn't want to lead anyone anymore.
Ash, meanwhile, was learning leadership in a completely new environment.
There were disagreements.
But Julie says they consistently found their way back to a common question:
What is right for the business and consistent with our values?
“People are people; they’re humans, and humans have emotions.”
That became the common ground.
When managing employees, the question wasn't simply whether a decision was operationally correct.
It was also whether their leadership was adding positively to somebody's experience or unnecessarily detracting from it.
Learning to believe in yourself.
When asked what has surprised her most about her leadership journey, Julie's answer was immediate:
“To believe in myself. To not have to rely on other people’s belief in me.”
It is perhaps the most personal theme in Julie's story.
Her own leadership has been influenced by both positive and negative experiences.
She remembers leaders who diminished her.
But she also remembers those who believed in her.
Both taught lessons.
The latter helped shape the leader she ultimately became.
Even today, Julie admits that self-belief isn't constant.
There are moments when it is strong and others when it is tested.
“When you get knocked down, it’s really hard to get up sometimes.”
Perhaps that is precisely why belief has become so important to the way she leads others.
Leading Tackle World through change
That philosophy would be tested when Julie stepped into one of her most significant leadership positions — Chair of Tackle World.
She assumed the role during a transitional period when differing views within the organisation had created the potential for division.
Julie understood that simply choosing one side wasn't going to create unity.
Her first job was to listen.
“My job, I felt, was to listen to everybody and have empathy to where they sit within their position.”
That didn't mean everybody had to agree.
It meant everybody needed to feel heard.
Julie worked with the Board and Head Office management to move beyond immediate issues and ask a more important question:
What needs to be in place to restore strength and unity for the future?
Some immediate fires needed extinguishing.
But long-term stability required something more.
It required empathy, systems, structure and a willingness to put the interests of the whole organisation ahead of individual positions.
“We’re not here to all agree on everything, but let’s look at the better good of the whole organisation.”
Sometimes leadership means picking up the phone
Chairing a national co-operative also meant leading people spread across Australia.
Much of that leadership happened remotely.
And Julie discovered something important.
Technology can connect people, but it doesn't necessarily help us understand them.
In person, you notice body language. You sense the energy in a room. You recognise when someone is uncomfortable, disengaged or ready to speak.
A screen gives you only part of that information.
Her lesson from that period is refreshingly simple:
“Pick the phone up.”
Emails and text messages can easily be interpreted with a tone the sender never intended.
Sometimes a conversation solves in minutes what an email chain might make worse.
Women can change the dynamic
Julie remembers attending her first Tackle World conference and looking around the room.
She was the only woman there.
It was daunting.
Years later, when Julie first joined the Tackle World Board, she was one of three women who became the first female directors in the organisation's history.
She believes their presence changed the dynamic.
“I feel like it really did level things out.”
Julie's view isn't that women and men necessarily lead in completely different ways.
Rather, she believes diversity introduces different perspectives into conversations.
One quality she believes women can particularly contribute is empathy.
It can change the tone of discussion, reduce ego and bring conversations back to the people affected by the decisions being made.
And in an industry built on passion, personalities and relationships, Julie believes that stronger business structure and greater diversity of thinking can only strengthen the sector.
The future of fishing is connected to its values
Julie has seen another significant change since entering fishing retail in 2015.
There is greater respect for the fish itself.
Where fishing photographs may once have focused primarily on the catch, she sees anglers increasingly thinking about fish care, sustainability and the environment.
She believes that evolution will be important to fishing's future.
And she sees younger generations accelerating it.
“I think our youth.”
Young consumers increasingly make decisions based on values.
Julie sees younger anglers becoming more conscious about taking only what they need rather than simply filling the freezer.
For fishing retailers and the wider industry, she believes there is an opportunity to align fishing participation with those changing values.
Sustainability isn't separate from the industry's commercial future.
Increasingly, the two are connected.
Encouraging more women onto the water
Julie has also watched female participation grow, although she believes Western Australia still has considerable opportunity.
One interesting change has come through FIFO families.
When dads are away working, mums are increasingly bringing children into the store themselves.
The children learn.
And the mums learn alongside them.
For Julie, encouraging more women into fishing doesn't necessarily require complicated programmes.
Sometimes visibility is enough.
On a recent store fishing trip, one female customer had been uncertain about attending.
Then she discovered Julie was going.
Her response was effectively: if Julie's going, I'm going.
That interaction reinforced something simple.
Women participating openly in fishing gives other women permission to imagine themselves doing the same thing.
“It’s about getting out there and doing it as much as we can ourselves as women to encourage others to see it as a great pastime.”
Why independent stores still matter
Julie's thoughts on independent fishing retail extend well beyond products and price.
She believes independents help “keep the industry honest” because they remain connected to what is actually happening within local communities.
Every day, independent retailers have conversations that larger organisations can struggle to replicate at scale.
They hear what anglers are catching.
What they're worried about.
What they want.
What has changed.
And sometimes they hear much more.
Julie describes the local tackle store as something of a community meeting place — particularly for men who may walk through the door ostensibly to talk about fishing and end up talking about life.
That gives the independent tackle store a role extending beyond retail.
It creates connection.
It creates community.
And, at times, it creates an informal environment in which people can simply talk.
Those thousands of seemingly insignificant conversations also provide independent retailers with something commercially valuable:
an extraordinarily close understanding of their customers.
Living the Tackle World life
So what does “Live the Tackle World Life” mean to Julie?
Her answer captures something deeper about fishing.
“To me, it’s a connection.”
Fishing can connect mates.
Parents and children.
Husbands and wives.
Families and communities.
But it can also provide the opposite — valuable time alone.
Julie and Ash might head fishing together only to end up at opposite ends of a beach.
They are together, yet each has space to switch off, connect with nature and find some stillness.
At other times, fishing provides excitement, energy and shared memories.
That combination is what makes it special.
“Sometimes [it brings] some stillness into life, and then other times it brings excitement into life.”
Recognition that meant more with time
Ask Julie which achievement makes her particularly proud and she nominates receiving the Hal Harvey Award from Tackle World.
Interestingly, the significance didn't immediately register.
The award was unexpected, and Julie had other things happening in her life at the time.
It was only when she returned home and shared the moment with her family that its significance really landed.
It represented recognition of years of contribution to an organisation she cared deeply about.
“I thought, wow, that’s a really beautiful, really appreciated recognition of a lot of work that I put into the organisation.”
Julie's Quick Five
Boat or shore? Shore.
Freshwater or saltwater? Saltwater.
Favourite fish to eat? Dhufish.
Favourite place to fish? A very special — and very secret — river in southern WA.
Morning or afternoon? Morning.
And a few extras…
Coffee order? Long black.
Never leave home without? Her water bottle
Biggest fish? A 25kg greyband cod from around 180 metres of water.
Bucket-list fishing destination? Australia's Top End — with a barramundi firmly on the target list.
_____________________________________
Women Who Lead
Women Who Lead celebrates the women helping shape Tackle World and Australia's recreational fishing industry.
From store owners and managers to directors and industry leaders, the series explores the experiences, lessons and different leadership styles of the women contributing to the future of independent fishing retail.
Julie Ramm's story reminds us that leadership isn't simply about having people follow you. It is about listening, understanding, creating the conditions for others to grow — and developing enough belief in yourself to step forward when leadership is needed most.
